Mike Van Esler: I’d like to start out by talking about how you think Stadium City fits into your research focus. You previously wrote a book about New Orleans using the HBO series Treme (2010–2013) as a case study on the interrelationships between race, class, and television production in a specific city. In Stadium City, you do something similar, using three cities (Atlanta, Seattle, and Minneapolis) to explore how sports stadiums, in conjunction with media industries, culture, and production both connect and disconnect communities from place. Clearly media, culture, and geography (both raced and classed) are central to your work. Why is this approach so important to you?
Helen Morgan Parmett: The Hurricane Katrina event was a watershed moment in US history—it laid bare, for all to see, the uneven raced and classed geography on which our cities (and, indeed our country more broadly), are built. As the city of New Orleans was being rebuilt—glacially slowly and painstakingly—I was in a PhD program at the other end of the Mississippi River (at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities). These two cities—connected by this river—could not be more different, but both are part of this fabric of uneven geography and struggles over spatial justice.
When I wrote Down in Treme: Race, Place, and New Orleans on Television (2019), one of the things I was really trying to get at is how media does more than just represent space and place. Much was made of the visual iconography of Katrina, but what I was seeing in the city’s rebuilding was that media was taking up a more practical and material role in rebuilding the city. The production practices of Treme aligned with the broader aims of the city’s post-Katrina creative economy rebuilding strategy. So the show was doing more than just representing the city’s rebirth and rebuilding—it was contributing to it. In that book and in my work more broadly, then, I have been trying to think through how media scholarship can attend to these more material ways in which media produces space—not just through its representations but through its broader practices.
I didn’t intend to write a book about sports, but one thing that I started to notice is that sports stadiums were working similarly to how media production was working in post-Katrina New Orleans. They too were being tasked with the material role of rebuilding struggling neighborhoods in cities across the country. And so I started to trace that thread that I had been pulling at with my first book—how can we think about media culture in this broader, material way? What are the practical and material ways in which sports and sporting production practices (which are bound up with the stadium as a kind of media production studio) contribute to our sense of space, place, and identity in a given city?
As a critical media scholar, thinking through media’s relationship to power is central to my work, and racial and class justice have been especially important. One thing that had struck me about Treme and New Orleans is that the production practices aimed to highlight “authentic” New Orleans—those parts of the city and its neighborhood cultures that were off-the beaten path, kind of hyperlocal. And I was seeing this with the stadium spaces that I was looking at as well—they were ensconced within particular sites and neighborhoods, aiming to pay tribute to these places and their cultures and histories. These stadiums are generally built in neighborhoods tied to histories of struggle for racial and class justice. This is similar to the dynamic between Treme and the neighborhood for which the show is named. What does it mean, then, for cultural industries to invest in local, neighborhood culture that is tied to racial and class struggle? This is a question that continues to be central to my scholarship.
MVE: That’s a really interesting backdoor into writing about sports, or rather, the sportification of place (which you define as “the coming together of sporting industries, media culture, stadiums, and urban governance”), which is a central concept of the book. It also speaks to the recent move within media studies to think more broadly about what constitutes an object of inquiry. With that in mind, how did your thinking about stadiums as media objects (both from a production and consumption point of view) evolve over the course of this project? Were you an avid sports fan who had developed a sophisticated (if unconscious) conceptualization of these forums of sport or were they merely the space in which sporting events took place and you were able to begin your research with a relative tabula rasa?
HMP: Although I am a sports fan, I was not a regular stadium-goer. So, my interest in stadiums was more driven by their relationship to urban space. I knew that stadiums were media production studios, that they enabled the consumption of the game through that mediatization, and that they were iconic buildings that symbolized the cities they were in. But my understanding of how media was integrated into the stadium and the city more broadly evolved throughout the project. One of the most striking parts of my research was in Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta when, during my tour of the stadium, I got to see how the fiber optic cables were built into the ceiling of the building’s and run throughout the infrastructure. On that same tour, I saw where the network TV trucks drive in and hook into the stadium to broadcast the game. This made me realize that stadiums were also media infrastructures, and that was a real turning point for me, as it got me more into that kind of infrastructural research.
MVE: Looking at stadiums through the lens of infrastructure was something that really stood out to me when reading through the book. There is obviously the hard infrastructure (like the fiber optic cables you mentioned), but also soft infrastructure like the crowd control and risk management systems you write about in chapter seven. I want to return to surveillance infrastructure later, but one of the interesting points you make is that third-generation stadiums—those stadiums, like the Minnesota Twins’ Target Field, conceived as part of larger urban regeneration and ‘placemaking’ projects beginning in the 1990s—are purposely blurring the boundaries between the stadium and its exterior environs, seen through outfield skyline views or exterior-facing public art projects. We can extend this to areas within the stadium as well through zoning, or the different ticketed areas like bleachers, club seating, or luxury boxes. There seems to be an imagined fluidity to space both inside and outside of the stadium designed to promote social cohesion (between stadium and neighborhood; cheap seats and luxury) that, at the end of the day, is still reinforcing social (and racial) stratification. I was wondering if you could expand on some other ways you found such stratification (intended or not) occurring?
HMP: The blurring of boundaries that aims to create a sense of cohesion is very interesting when, at the same time, stadiums are some of the most fortified infrastructures in the world and include heavily policed and surveilled boundaries that create the kind of stratified divisions you mention. So stadiums, much like our cities and their other forms of attendant architecture, are built around this kind of contradictory sense of belonging and exclusion. In the book, I talk a lot about how media technology, especially enabled by digitization, enables stratification while making it appear virtually invisible. Nearly all stadiums are completely digital now, requiring digital tickets with all cashless purchases. This alone is a kind of stratification that makes it possible for some bodies to access the stadium who have the capability of going completely digital while excluding others. That digitization further enables stratification in the stadium, making certain floors only accessible with the right kind of ticket, or digitized entry points that work for some tickets and not others.
One thing that particularly struck me in my research on stadium designs is the contemporary emphasis on tiered luxury—it is not just like there are the cheap seats and then the box seats. Rather, the stadium experience has a variety of tiered levels that enables varying access to luxury experiences that can be catered to the kinds of audiences they seek to attract. This too, then, has the sense of creating a kind of feeling of cohesion—you can still access an element of a luxury experience that is a step above the cheap seats, even perhaps on a middle-class salary. But this reinforces the sensibility that luxury is for everybody, when that is anything but the case, especially for the upper most tiers.
MVE: Considering sporting event experiences from my youth (1990s, dawn of the third generation of stadiums as you periodize it), I have noticed an increased stratification of in-stadium experiences, sort of a sliding scale that maps onto socioeconomic status. Even things like concessions—which have moved way beyond the standardized hot dogs, soda, and beer stands/vendors—have seen stratification. I’m thinking of where the craft beer or cocktail stalls are located or where fans can go to purchase “gourmet” food items. These seem to be fairly proximate to the more expensive tickets.
I want to talk a little about the areas surrounding the stadium now. You don’t use this term in your book, but I’ve seen elsewhere the idea that sports owners have embraced a Disney model for their real estate, essentially looking to own all aspects of the immediate surrounding stadium space, maximizing the revenue that owners can make from their teams (and, incidentally, not report this as team revenue for the purposes of revenue sharing or salary cap calculations for the players). My hometown team the St. Louis Cardinals did this with Busch Stadium III about twenty years ago, buying up the surrounding real estate (which was mostly empty buildings due to St. Louis’ unique urban situation) and building a giant fan zone (they call it Ballpark Village), lofts, hotels, restaurants and other sorts of retail. The Cubs new-ish owners the Ricketts also did this with Wrigleyville. How did you see this impacting the three cities you studied and, if you know, what is local resident sentiment like regarding these team-owned/affiliated real estate tracts?
HMP: The comparison to Disney is an apt one, but it can also be misleading. Most people think of the Disney model in terms of Disneyfication—flattening out the culture and identity of a place and turning it into a commodified and homogenized branded theme park. But that doesn’t fully get at the picture, since Disney is also moving away from this strategy toward what I’ve suggested elsewhere is better characterized as Disneyomatics. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of the axiomatic, Disneyomatics demonstrates how these branded spaces are increasingly marked by efforts at diversification and place-specificity. So too, while Ballpark Village and the like are themed and branded spaces built around the stadium (a kind of sportification of place), I don’t think it is fair to characterize them simply as flattened out spaces that are dominated by the team’s brand. They aim to capture the diverse branded values of the local histories and neighborhoods surrounding the stadiums themselves.
With that said, what you see happening in St. Louis—the movement toward stadium districts—is absolutely becoming part of the playbook in contemporary stadium building across the country. The stadium district targets development of the whole area surrounding the stadium into a sportified neighborhood, from which the teams can draw revenue from all of the activity around the stadium rather than only that which takes place inside. In my case studies, I clearly saw this happening in Atlanta, with the Braves’ development of The Battery Atlanta in suburban Cobb County, and in Seattle’s “SoDo” neighborhood (so named for its historic location South of the Kingdome, also known as the Industrial District).
The Braves’ move to Cobb County was in part motivated by this desire to create a stadium district, and its new urbanism type of development mimics a feeling of being in an “authentic” Atlanta neighborhood while being able to build and control the development of the neighborhood according the branded ideals of the Braves. Moving out to Cobb County enabled the Braves to avoid the kind of pushback by residents that they were getting at the old site of Turner Field, in Atlanta’s Summerfield neighborhood. There, a group of residents and activist groups were lobbying for a community benefits agreement in exchange for a new stadium, and the Braves opted to flee Atlanta for the suburbs rather than wade through city and neighborhood politics.
The neighborhoods around Seattle’s T-Mobile Park and Lumen Field have a long history of resident resistance and protest to the stadiums, much of it stemming from Asian American activists in the Chinatown International District (CID) which borders the Industrial District/SoDo. There has been a lot of talk about trying to turn SoDo into a stadium district. Before Key Arena was refurbished as Climate Pledge Arena for the Kraken (Seattle’s NHL expansion team), there was talk about building a hockey and basketball arena there, and there is still some talk about a potential basketball arena in the future. A stadium district plan has been circulating since the early 2010s, but there is a good deal of pushback, especially from the port and industries in the neighborhood who fear that this would adversely affect their industries with regulations that shifted the neighborhood’s priorities toward entertainment experiences, consumption, and residential development. The adjacent neighborhoods, especially the CID, are also vocal about their concerns about further stadium district development and the extent to which it will drive up property prices and rents and lead to further displacement of longtime residents. These groups are represented by organizations like Historic South Downtown, a non-profit that was established in the wake of the protests against the Kingdome to represent the rights and interests of local residents vis-à-vis the stadiums, as well as more nascent groups like “Humbows, Not Hotels.” This group, which is part of the CID Coalition, is riffing on the original slogan of Kingdome protestors, who used the phrase “Hum Bows, Not Hot Dogs,” to protest stadium district oriented development.
At the same time, residents are diverse groups of people with often competing interests, and not everyone is resistant to the stadium district. Some residents and businesses see this as a positive step in the right direction in contrast to previous generations of stadiums that promised to “renew” or “revitalize” neighborhoods merely through building the stadium itself while putting little money or effort into anything beyond the stadium walls. It’s not a simple case of stadium district good for business/teams vs. bad for residents/marginalized folks—there are benefits and drawbacks, and this is in part what makes it such an interesting development in stadium building. Working directly with residents and community organizations that represent the diversity of the neighborhood and making it clear what the realities are for those who are most at risk of displacement—both physically and culturally—from stadium district development, and then regulating and protecting those interests, is the best path, in my view, toward creating community benefits agreements that truly benefit communities.
MVE: It does seem to be the expectation for new stadiums/arenas to embrace the district model. I actually wonder if we will see that come for college athletics eventually (specifically the football stadium and maybe the basketball arena for institutions with a much stronger basketball tradition than football), although there are a variety of mitigating factors that would distinguish college athletics from the pros (an increasingly blurry boundary).
While we’re discussing areas outside the stadium, surveillance is an important topic for your book, devoting chapter seven to the issue. I was at Busch Stadium the other day for the first time in years and one of the things that stood out to me was the omnipresence of surveillance, ranging from not-particularly-surreptitious CCTV cameras to ushers constantly asking me if I needed help (I’m sure most are genuinely offering aid for lost fans, but it felt almost as if I was having to go through a security gate every time I went to my seat).
I’m not sure if you saw the story, but Wired and Pablo Torre Finds Out had some reporting on surveillance at Madison Square Garden, with owner James Dolan using his surveillance apparatus and secret police to identify fans who would criticize Dolan, track a trans woman throughout the arena, and otherwise enact revenge on his perceived enemies by banning them from the premises. This surveillance state extended outside of the arena as well, tracking protesters and raising questions about the legality of surveilling people in public spaces. When you talked to security teams or stadium representatives, did they go beyond the “keeping fans and players safe” messaging that seem to be the main explanations for such an extensive security apparatus? And what is your overall takeaway from how stadiums surveil fans, athletes, and employees?
HMP: I had not seen the James Dolan article! That is indeed shocking in a way, but of course entirely possible in the closed surveillance system that comprises the contemporary stadium. In some ways, though, this kind of story—a vengeful owner behaving badly by taking advantage of the surveillance system set up in place—overlooks or perhaps renders less scary and shocking the more everyday ways in which those systems are put to use. That is, Dolan seems like just a bad apple in an otherwise good system that is set up to keep us all safer and happier. And so it becomes not the systems at work that are scary, shocking, and in need of rethinking, but just Dolan.
And it is precisely this kind of logic that the security teams and stadium representatives I spoke to employed. I was actually really surprised that there was not more critical concern over the dangers of surveillance culture and its attendant data mining and privacy invasions. Folks at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta got the closest to a critique when they noted that the facial recognition technology other stadiums were employing often misrecognized or failed to recognize Black faces. In a majority Black city, they expressed hesitation over implementing the technology because of its potential racial biases. But this was not a general concern over the practice of using those kinds of surveillance techniques, only a sense that the technology needed to develop further before they could implement it, which they have since done.
Thus, the two main discourses supporting surveillance at the stadium are centered around 1) risk and keeping everyone safer, and 2) fan experience. The first one is kind of obvious, but the second is, in my opinion, the more interesting discourse because it enlists active participation by fans and beyond with a promise to create more meaningful, personal, and happy experiences. This is what makes the stadium such a perfect testing ground for these kinds of technologies, since the desire for affective experiences that resonate with the fan makes them more likely to submit to surveillance techniques that they might otherwise feel uncomfortable with or be critical of.
Ultimately, my overall takeaway of surveillance at the stadium is that it extends well beyond the stadium itself—as a testing ground for technologies that eventually get implemented elsewhere, like schools, airports, shops, on the street—and it is inextricably racialized and bound up with the production of what George Lipsitz calls the white spatial imaginary. Surveillance is always already tied to the process of racialization (historically through its roots in the transatlantic slave trade and practically through its act of coding and sorting bodies), but it gets normalized in the stadium and beyond and made to seem objective through its appeal to data processing.
MVE: I wanted to close with a couple process questions. You have a number of interviews with team/stadium officials throughout the book and I’m wondering how you went about securing those interviews and if it required a decent amount of convincing on your part to have these employees speak with you for a book that is probably not what they think of when they think of publicity. Furthermore, what was the general tenor of the interviews? My guess is that many of them had their PR-approved version of answers ready to go, but did you catch them off guard at points? And finally, do you have advice for other scholars who are looking to talk with people in executive positions who may not understand the kind of work that we do?
HMP: In order to get the interviews with team and stadium officials, I first and foremost drew on the public institutions that are set up to facilitate the public interest in stadiums. For the most part, these kinds of institutions—like the Washington State Public Facilities District and the Minnesota Sports Facility Authority—were put into place in response to the massive amounts of public tax dollars that go into building these facilities. Thus, my first entry into talking with people generally went through these institutions—since they are at some level accountable to public citizens like myself, I figured they would be pretty likely to grant me an interview. I then asked these folks to put me in touch with other officials and stakeholders, which they were generally willing to do. And from there, I just hoped that folks would be willing to talk with me—some were, others weren’t, some on record, others anonymously. I was also lucky to have a friend who has a contact at the Arthur Blank Foundation, and that connection was one of the major reasons I chose to focus on Atlanta, since they were willing to give me access.
My methodological approach with these interviews draws on Foucault’s theory of discourse—“what is being said in what is said.” So I truly wasn’t looking to trip folks up and get them to say something on record that proved my argument or demonstrated my critique. Instead, I was genuinely interested in the rationale behind stadium infrastructure and their connections to media, neighborhoods, and urbanism. So, the interviews more more inductive and exploratory.
Still, you are correct that a good amount of what my interviewees shared, or at least wanted to share (especially officials working directly with the teams) was typical public relations speak that could be gleaned from their websites or other interviews. I had to dig a bit deeper to try to get them to talk about the rationale, the thinking behind what they were building and why and how they envisioned the stadium’s (and its mediatizations’) relationships to particular aspects of neighborhood culture and revitalization.
One thing that did stick out in an interview that genuinely surprised me was the Twins president’s description of the stadium infrastructure itself in terms of a set of neighborhoods. I thought this was really interesting given my focus on neighborhood culture and place-making, and something that I hadn’t seen him or other Twins folks voice elsewhere.
For other media scholars looking to do this kind of interview work with stakeholders, I recommend starting with public institutions and journalists. This has generally been my best avenue into starting to connect with decisionmakers. State and city film commissions, for example, are a good place to start. City mayor’s offices, particularly their offices of cultural economy (if they have one), can also be great points of contact. Connecting with journalists who write about your topic can also be a great avenue to connecting with folks, since they generally have those kinds of contacts readily available. This was my initial avenue into getting to talk with folks involved in the production of Treme, including the showrunners, for my first book. For this book, I also reached out to a lot of non-profits who had ties to the neighborhoods at stake or in the stadium or sports culture.
As you note in your question, it can be challenging to try to articulate what we are doing over here in the humanities, but that is an important challenge for us to work to overcome! Translating our work for decision-makers and stakeholders is, in my view, a real necessity. I found most people want to talk about what they are doing, and since academic work can be another point of publicity for them (even if they are not entirely sure what your work does), they are willing to be interviewed. I tried to stress how my work could matter for them as well. For this book, for example, whether I was talking to folks at public institutions, non-profits, or team executives, I tried to stress that I hoped my work would inform how decision-makers thought about local neighborhoods and the impacts stadiums have on them.
One way to help with the translation of your work is to start talking to folks before you get too deep into the work so that your points of contact with them are genuinely exploratory. Make sure you’ve looked at other interviews executives have done previously so that you get a sense of the kinds of questions that haven’t yet been asked. And don’t be afraid to ask the hard questions! Give folks a chance to answer your critiques and see what they say. Be willing to be surprised!
Mike Van Esler is Associate Professor of Radio TV Film at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. His current research focuses on the transhistorical connections between various manifestations of media retail, questioning how we can relate locations and services as diverse as department stores, Walmart, Best Buy, the iTunes store, and Amazon Prime Video. His work has appeared in Television & New Media, The Journal of Film and Video, and The Journal of Popular Culture, among others.
Helen Morgan Parmett, the Edwin W. Lawrence Forensic Professor of Speech, is an Associate Professor in the Department of English, Film & Television Studies at the University of Vermont. Helen’s research and teaching centers on critical media studies, where she focuses especially on relationships among media, identity, and space/place. Her research is invested in how media’s production practices (particularly those of radio, TV, and sports media) are materially implicated in urban spatiality and the constitution of place and identity. She is author of Down in Treme: Race, Place, and New Orleans on Television (Franz Steiner Verlag, 2019, Media Geography at Mainz series), and numerous journal articles and book chapters.
